ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the history and an estimate of current understanding of the spatial architecture of primary visual cortex (V -1, striate cortex, area 17) in primates. Special emphasis is placed on experimental techniques, mathematical and computational analyses, and the relevance of V-1 architecture to current work in machine vision. An attempt has been made to provide a representative coverage of the primary literature, but completeness in this regard is not claimed. Rather, the intention is to provide an overview of the difficulties, both conceptual and experimental, that have characterized this field for the past 50 years, and to provide some insight into the importance of spatial architecture in visual cortex to both biological and machine vision.
